


Twisted

by snowynight



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Gen, Horror, Mystery, Mystery Stories, POV Third Person, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-22
Updated: 2011-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-18 12:11:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowynight/pseuds/snowynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony receives a mystical gift and finds more than he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twisted

Tony would rather put off paperwork like forever, but Pepper pulled him out of his workshop and loomed above him like a hawk, preventing him from escaping. Sighing, Tony signed over the document on top of the desk without giving it a look. Then he put it aside and was ready to sign another when he noticed an envelope. Curious, he opened the envelope and pulled out a CD ROM, with a note on the cover that said, "This program can crack anything. Enjoy." He smiled. This must be a gift or a prank Pepper was pulling on him.

He put the disc inside a computer cut off from the network access, scanned it for virus, then installed and ran it. Whatever it was intended for, it would be fun to play with it any way. He started by throwing it the code generated by one of his old ciphering program.

To his surprise, the code was cracked in about 10 seconds. It might be a fluke, he thought, and threw harder things to the program. The result was the same. Now it was a real challenge. He rubbed his hands and felt like a forlorn kid playing with his puzzle.

No matter what he threw at it, the program cracked it easily like a child's toy. It was alarming. Even he wouldn't be able to produce such a thing easily. He started to be curious about the sender and his purpose. A warning, an invitation or what?

He started to reverse engineer the program code. It was slick and resisted his effort. Finally he accessed it with his Extremis.

\-------

"Tony, your meeting." Pepper said.

"It's in five minutes," Tony protested, having accessed Pepper's data pad.

"Funny. Check the clock. It's now."

Tony was about to say that Pepper adjusted the clock 5 minutes earlier, but he accessed the Greenwich time and found that she was right. The time in Extremis was five minutes late.

Why? Tony frowned at the flaw. A minor quirk could indicate much bigger thing. Before his had started the investigation though, Pepper dragged him to the meeting. When he returned, he looked at the computer screen.

It was blank.

Tony accessed the CIA, the SHIELD and NSA computer systems and discovered that people received similar programs. Despite their effort so far no sources were traced. Whoever was behind it was really, really good. Someone like this could be one of the most dangerous threat. Tony threw himself back to the program

From his own more shady experience, he knew that some hackers like to leave a signature in the program, to taunt the authorities. Such a flamboyant hacker probably couldn't resist the temptation. The programming language was alien enough that it was unlike anything he came across before. Every time when he thought he was getting close, it slipped from his near grasp and disappeared from the corner. But when he thought he lost it, it appeared before him again, with flirting in its eyes. It was enticing and addictive, like when he worked with the Extremis language, only with a more relaxed time limit.

A signal indicated new emails. The first had no subject; Tony opened it, and frowned. The same word repeated again and again in the body of the email. Hastur.

After a second, Tony shrugged, and deleted it.

The next email was from the research department about the report of current project; he glanced over it, and clicked reply. As he was typing the last lines of his response, he noticed that the signature block had changed; the usual sleek text and logo had been replaced by a single word.

Hastur

* * *

It was a sleepless night and Tony went to the study to pick a book to read as usual. "The Whisperer in Darkness"? It sounded interesting. He settled into the arm chair and started reading.

It was a horror story, with some sci-fi elements. The description of mountain-like monsters and aliens which harvested human brains to keep them alive in a jar gave him the creep. Then a name caught his attention.

Hastur

So it was where the name came from. He turned to the back and found that it was written by Lovecraft. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to read, because he found that he was now too awake to sleep. He left the study when he stopped.

There were some strange sound from the corridor.

He instinctively started to run toward it. Then he realized that unarmed, he was probably helpless to handle an intruder who could get beyond the defence of the Stark Tower. He held the book close and wished that whoever that was would be subdued by the lure of a good book. Should he call for other Avengers, he wondered. Then he paused.

A crow looked right into his eyes, with its gaze as old as the beginning of the world. It fluttered its wings and disappeared before his eyes.

Tony couldn't quite believed his eyes and he checked the security camera tape.

There was nothing.

* * *

Tony was not so patiently listening to the board members when suddenly a screen of 0 and 1 overrode his sensory input. He could hear vague sound, but the code, he was hopeless to it. He knew he should be alarmed, should pause to investigate the attack, but he couldn't. The code had a strange beauty which drew him in and he knew that more knowledge was waiting for him if only he could crack it ------

"Mr Stark?" The code started to fade. He opened his eyes (when did he close it?) and found that he was surrounded by several board members arguing with each other. One of them said, "Call the ambulance!" Another pulled out a phone. Tony said, "There's no need. I'm all right."

The board members looked at him with suspicion but the person paused in calling. One of them said, "Mr. Stark, if you health condition affects the company operation it 's no longer..."

"I say I'm all right. Now let's return to the meeting."

 

Discreetly he was worried. It must be a virus attack. What else could it be? Extremis faithfully accessed the security camera to get the previous recording so he could went back into the meeting almost immediately. He smiled, charmed and the meeting went smoothly. At the end of the meeting he looked into the board members' faces.

They have no faces. The features are replaced with 0 and 1

* * *

  
If at first cracking the program was just fun, now Tony got to be fully obsessive about it. Tony skipped work as much as he could, went to the bed late and nearly gave up an armour update. "Damn it!" Tony drunk another cup of his coffee. It just refused to give. His reason argued that he had more important things to do, like finding the problem with his Extremis, but he just couldn't give up. He drunk coffee like water, slept less and less, and he looked like a living dead in the morning mirror.

"Tony, I don't care what you're working on. I announce that you're going to take a break. Eat something and sleep," Pepper said and drove Tony out of his office. Tony returned to the Stark Tower when he received a call from the Avengers communicator. He received it and Steve at the other side said, "Wrecking Crews, Central Park. The others are going there. Meet you." Tony summoned his armour and grinned. Sometimes he missed an old fashioned supervillain fight.

When he arrived there, Luke was already fighting with Piledriver. The Wrecker swung his cow bar at Steve, who blocked it with his shield, pulled a manoeuvre and kicked him. Tony shot a beam at Thunderball when he was about to swing at Spiderman and then---------

Everything felt so hopeless to him. The weight of despair and hopelessness was so heavy that he stumbled. The Wrecker used this chance to attack him. He saw it but he was too frozen to move------

A shield threw right at Wrecker. "Iron Man!" Steve's sound penetrated Tony's thought and he held on to it like a life line. The Extremis faithfully told him that his heart was breathing and his heart beating faster than normal even allowed for a fight. The Wreckers were already rounded up and Steve looked at him with worry. "What's happened? You seemed... not really here."

Tony frantically searched for an excuse but then one of the police officer wanted to talk to Steve and Tony was spared an interrogation, for now. He looked up.

The leaves were bluish green. When he blinked, they were green again.

"Tony, we need to talk." Steve said, after he caught Tony at the study when they were back to the tower.

"Really?" Tony stalled.

"You practically froze in the middle of the fight. What's happened?"

"Must be a temporary overload of sensory input. Don't worry. I'm still at the top of the game."

"Tony... We're friends, you know? You can talk to me when there's problem."

"Of course." Tony lied.

* * *

Tony returned to the program. He was never one to deny that he had an addictive personality and the program now seemed like a holy grail in his quest. He attacked it with all his tools and improved some of them in the progress, and he finally got some results. Encodes inside the program there was a name.

Hastur.

* * *

Tony googled the name Hastur on the Internet. It was a being in the Cthulhu mythos, but no one was certain what it meant. It could be a place, a person, a sign, or a being. Tony frowned. He 'd rather the entry came with some useful details. A known enemy was half the enemy.

The wacky timing of Extremis still refused to be fixed. Now it was exactly five minutes faster than normal. It worried him. It might be nothing, or it might be something much greater. What if...

_You don't want to contemplate that Extremis may be compromised, again. The last time you nearly cost the city, and you nearly cost Steve. For all the thing you were nearly helpless to it. And you'll be again._

It was not his voice. Where did the voice come from?

_You will hear me again._

Extremis told him that his heart beat and breath rate increased. But Extremis wasn't reliable any more.

* * *

Tony put his armour into locked down. It felt like ripping a part of his flesh off but the alternative, that his armours were manipulated again... just no. He emptied the day's schedule, shut himself with a computer and cut off all the feeds. The problem started with the program, and it was his only hope to finish the work. No one could help him, and he didn't even know how much time was left.

The signs were wrong. He brushed through every code but he still couldn't find a solution. He didn't want to think of the worst option. Memory flooded over him

_He was facing a younger, more innocent face of himself. His teammates were staring at him, with anger, hatred, worry, mistrust, and... what had happened?_

_Then there were memory of the cry, the screams, the blood stains on his hand. Someone manipulated him to kill and betray his friends._

_And he was helpless to it._

_He was fighting with his shadow. No one gained the upper hand yet. Their every moves were telegraphed to each other through the Extremis. He unconsciously reached for the faint sign of heart beat._

_Then his enemy knew. It knew how to get to him._

_But this time, you may not be so lucky..._ The same alien voice whispered to him.

* * *

_He was walking in a tunnel. He could hear the water drops dripping, one by one. The tunnel was dark and each step he walked he walked into something slimy. The only fade light came from the end of the tunnel. When he reached the end, the sudden light was so strong that he needed several minutes to adjust. But when he could see again he had no idea what was before him._

A mountain? But it was shrieking and jumping. The glint was all wrong, the colour...

He wanted to run, the desire so burning that he would kill to get away, but his feet were rooted to the ground. He could only stand here, helpless, seeing that the mountain of monster came over him------

* * *

He woke up to a familiar smell of disinfectant and detergents.

"Tony! You finally wake up!" Steve exclaimed.

"What...What's happened?" He got his voice out in a short time, that meant he wasn't here for long.

"Pepper couldn't reach you for two days, then we found that you were unconscious in your room. You really frightened us a lot."

"When can I leave?"

"After the doctor check you up. The doctor said you have minor dehydration and nutrient deficiency. You've not been eating and drinking water, are you? Extremis isn't all powerful, you know."

Tony had a systematic scan. The signs were all normal. Extremis' timing was accurate again. Perhaps Extremis had fought off the problem by itself. Perhaps

Steve said, "I'll let you rest now. Take care."

"See you," Tony said, relieved. Everything seemed to be all right. He closed his eyes again.

Outside the window, a dark crow stared at him. Then it pointed its head toward the west, as if heeding a call and flew away.


End file.
